Enola Gay

The Enola Gay was the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The weapon was known as "Little Boy". The Enola Gay was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Force's 509th Composite Group and flew her mission out of Tinian, a small island in the Marianas[?] chain. She was one of only 15 B-29s modified to deliver atomic bombs. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the plane's pilot, named her after his mother.

The Enola Gay was followed only two days later by another B-29, called "Bocks Car", which dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The second weapon was known as "Fat Man". As of February 2003, Little Boy and Fat Man were the only two nuclear weapons ever used offensively during wartime.

The Enola Gay has been fully restored and is currently hangared at the Smithsonian Institution's Paul E. Garber facility in Suitland, Maryland. The Enola Gay will be a keystone exhibit at the National Air and Space Smithsonian's[?] new Udvar-Hazy Center museum at Washington Dulles International Airport, scheduled for completion in December 2003. The Smithsonian's site on the Enola Gay includes links to crew lists and other details. http://www.nasm.edu/galleries/gal103/gal103

General (USAF, retired) Paul Tibbets, has his own web site dedicated to the plane at http://www.theenolagay.com

Tibbets waves from his cockpit before the takeoff, 6 August 1945.

See also:

• Manhattan Project